She's a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she is transformed from the beautiful center of attention to an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists.

People who bought this also bought...

Survivor

Tender Branson, the last surviving member of the so-called Creedish Death Cult, is dictating his life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the airplane, which will crash shortly into the vast Australian outback. But before it does, he will unfold the tale of his journey from an obedient Creedish child and humble domestic servant to an ultra-buffed, steroid-and-collagen-packed media messiah.

Damned

“Are you there, Satan? It’s me, Madison,” declares the whip-tongued 13-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk’s subversive new work of fiction. The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a marijuana overdose—and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell.

Diary: A Novel

Diary takes the form of a "coma diary" kept by one Misty Tracy Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in a hospital after a suicide attempt. It is a dark, hilarious, and poignant act of storytelling from America's favorite, most inventive nihilist.

Lullaby

New York Times best-selling author of Fight Club, which was adapted into a major motion picture, Chuck Palahniuk offers a haunting tale. Winner of the Northwest Booksellers Association Award, Palahniuk is one of the rare literary geniuses who has been able to bridge the gap between a cult following and commercial success.

Rant

Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the New York Times best-sellers Fight Club and Lullaby, is known for his edgy novels, and Rant is no exception. Palahniuk presents this fictional biography of Buster "Rant" Casey in a series of vignettes told by the people who knew him best. As intricate as a spider web, Rant succeeds in recounting the story of one man's life only through the eyes of others. But the question remains, "Who was Rant Casey?"

Haunted

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel made up of stories: 23 of them, to be precise. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter, sometimes all at once. They are told by people who have answered an ad headlined "Writers' Retreat: Abandon Your Life for Three Months", and who are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of "real life" that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them.

Beautiful You

From the author of Fight Club, the classic portrait of the damaged contemporary male psyche, now comes this novel about the apocalyptic marketing possibilities of female pleasure. Beautiful You is Palahniuk's much-anticipated satire of the emerging erotic thriller genre, a mash-up of mommy porn and chick lit à la Sex and the City, and fantasy lit à la Clan of the Cave Bear. Imagine if Ira Levin had a baby with Jean Auel.

Doomed

Madison Spencer, the liveliest, snarkiest dead girl in the universe, continues the adventures in the afterlife begun in Damned. Having somewhat reluctantly escaped from hell, she now wanders the purgatory that is Earth as a ghostly spirit, seeking her do-gooding celebrity parents, fighting the malign control of Satan, recounting the disgracefully funny encounter with her grandfather in a fetid highway rest stop in upstate New York when she - oh, never mind - and climaxing in a rendezvous with destiny on the new, totally plastic continent in the Pacific called, not at all accidentally, Madlantis.

Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread

For years Chuck Palahniuk has reserved his best storytelling for his readings, often choosing to read a new short story instead of whatever novel he is supposed to be promoting. Make Something Up compiles these previously unpublished tales for the very first time, plus the Byliner social media insta-classic "Phoenix" and Palahniuk's most notable pieces from Playboy.

Fight Club

When a listless office employee (the narrator) meets Tyler Durden, his life begins to take on a strange new dimension. Together they form Fight Club - a secretive underground group sponsoring bloody bare-knuckle boxing matches staged in seedy alleys, vacant warehouses, and dive-bar basements. Fight Club lets ordinary men vent their suppressed rage, and it quickly develops a fanatical following.

Invisible Monsters Remix

Injected with new material, Invisible Monsters Remix fulfills Chuck Palahniuk’s original vision for his 1999 novel, moving a daring satire on beauty and the fashion industry even further into a wildly unique listening experience. Palahniuk’s fashion-model protagonist has it all - boyfriend, career, loyal best friend - until an accident destroys her face, her ability to speak, and her self-esteem. Enter Brandy Alexander, queen supreme, one operation away from becoming a bonafide woman.

Pygmy

"Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67, on arrival Midwestern American airport....Code name: Operation Havoc." Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the U.S. disguised as exchange students to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified attack of massive terrorism

Tell-All

Hazie Coogan has for decades tended to the outsized needs of Katherine “Miss Kathie” Kenton, a larger-than-life star who has survived multiple marriages, career comebacks, cosmetic surgeries, and emotional dramas. But danger lurks with the arrival of a gentleman caller named Webster Carlton Westward III, who worms his way into Miss Kathie’s heart and boudoir.

Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories (Unabridged Selections)

Chuck Palahniuk's world has always been, well, different from yours and mine. These pieces from Stranger Than Fiction, his first nonfiction collection, prove just how different, in ways both highly entertaining and deeply unsettling.

The Rules of Attraction

Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan '80s, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future - or even the present - who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle.

Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

Published two weeks after Vladimir Nabokov’s seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of his greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest, but it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat. This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.

F***ness

This darkly offbeat novel opens with the narrator, Wallace Black, as the target of the school bully's violence. After suffering a horrendous beating, Black goes home to his equally abusive family. As a punishment for fighting at school, his mother straps a set of grotesque horns to the top of his head. He is unsure of where the horns came from. They have always been in the house. And they contain a power no one could have expected.

Play It As It Lays

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It As It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the listener.

Publisher's Summary

She's a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she is transformed from the beautiful center of attention to an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists.

Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better - and that salvation hides in the last places you'll ever want to look.

I know Chuck Palahniuk is not for everyone, but I love his strange dark humor and I always know I can pick up one of his books and get a story like none other. Invisible Monsters definitely delivers. Yes it has drugs yes it has violence and yes most of the characters you are not going to empathize with but isn’t that what we read Chuck Palahniuk for? I know his bleak view of human nature and unique characters are just part of why I keep coming back.

As for the Audio version of this book it was perfection! The dramatization was spot on. I would highly recommend this audio book especially if you are already a Palahuiuk fan.

My husband likes Chuck Palahnuik and begged me to listen to one. I have never watched Fight Club or read anything by him so I had no idea what to expect. It had very good narration. The story was bizarre. It was funny though because the stranger it got, the more I couldn't turn it off. It was like seeing a horrible car accident, you don't want to look but you can't help it. I don't know if I will ever read another book by him again but I can honestly say that I have never read anything like it before. Chuck Palahniuk definitely has one heck of an imagination.

My interests run to psychology, popular science, history, world literature, and occasionally something fun like Jasper Fforde. It seems like the only free time I have for reading these days is when I'm in the car so I am extremely grateful for audio books. I started off reading just the contemporary stuff that I was determined not to clutter up my already stuffed bookcases with. And now audio is probably 90% of my "reading" matter.

OK, I realize Palahniuk is not for everyone. As disturbing as his ideas and imagery tend to be, they serve the purpose of derailing us from our accustomed view of the world. That frees us to see the world a little more openly. I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that what people say isn't always the truth, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're lying. Incredibly enjoyable read if you're up to it.

Maybe I'm sick & twisted, but I loved this book! The main character, who doesn't have a face and can't talk, is BRILLIANT! Obviously the narrator talks to tell the story, but as the character she speaks gibberish. Her nuances, accents, etc, make this a fabulous book to listen to. The story itself is hilarious, even though though it could be taken as tragic. Lots of twists and turns, but you have to pay attention because it jumps around a lot time-wise.

This book was as annoying as it was interesting! This was my first time with this author. Not sure if I would read him again but I did get a few belly laughs from listening. Interesting story, surely twisted but fun.

Up until the half way point of this book, I was wondering whether I should just abandon it. Invisible Monsters begins with a scene involving a shooting at a wedding and the rest of the book is devoted to telling you how we got there. The book jumps around in time constantly, a gleeful mess that refuses to make sense until its good and ready to. So there I was at the half way point, deciding if I wanted to take the rest of the ride. Then Chuck throws you a bone. A hilarious scene in which the protagonist (a model who has had her face shot off) has thanksgiving with her parents drew me back in. After this, the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of the story begin to thunk into place and you begin to see where the story is headed. And you smile. The second half of the book is a darkly comic tale of how all the strands of the story and the characters come together into the final train wreck of a WTF climax.I usually don't take to female narrators (I don't know why), but Anna Fields is great here. Some of the deadpan and darkly comic moments, she really nails.

Chuck P. presents a unique, humorous and more-than-a-little twisted look at the modern, cosmetically-obsessed, gender-confused, drug-addled and (on many levels) just plain dysfunctional world in which we dwell. Thoroughly entertaining, whimsical and as offbeat a storyline as you will find anywhere. This is not for those who shock easily.

The narrator is exceptionally good. I usually dislike performance audio. Generally, I would rather just hear the story in a normal reading voice: no distracting accents meant to distinguish one character from another, no dramatization with the narrator imposing their idea of where the points of emphasis should be, none of the invariably oafish-sounding male voices from female narrators, none of the female voices from male narrators that always sound somehow weak and mocking. Narrator Anna Fields reads like someone who effortlessly gets what is great about the writing of Chuck Palahniuk. Incidentally, I find her voice strangely reminiscent of Ellen Degeneres.

this book is undoubtedly one of the funniest books i've ever read/listened too. and it is very, VERY well read by anna fields. not only is it hilarious, but it is a really mind bending story with a definite 'fight club' resin pasted all over the plot. well done chuck palahniuk!

I didn't identify or have any empathy for the main characters, I just did'n't like or care about them. I should have realized this by reading the synopsis but I did get the impression it was going to be removed from a typical sex change diva and his best girl type drama. Suffice to say it wasn't and I got the feeling the author was trying to shock us by attacking that fake plastic world that the model lives in, and it's not a viewpoint that I have an interest in or care for.

1 of 2 people found this review helpful

Report Inappropriate Content

If you find this review inappropriate and think it should be removed from our site, let us know. This report will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.

Your report has been received. It will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.

Can't wait to hear more from this listener?

You can now follow your favorite reviewers on Audible.

When you follow another listener, we'll highlight the books they review, and even email* you a copy of any new reviews they write. You can un-follow a listener at any time to stop receiving their updates.

* If you already opted out of emails from Audible you will still get review emails by the listeners you follow.